I disagree. Every time I tried to put together an app with any of Common Lisp, Scheme or Smalltalk I found myself fighting idiosyncrasies unrelated to my app. Obviously it can be done, but the advantage of using those languages start to diminish. It's not about popularity, it's about practicality. I found making Java web applications unpractical in a similar way although I haven't tried enough.
This is an example of an anecdotal piece of evidence, and without a close examination of the "idiosyncrasies" and your definition of "practical", it is difficult to have a discussion. I recognize, though, that people have different opinions on what language is most familiar/useful to them, and at the end of the day, people get work done and make money, whatever they use.
Yes, it's only anecdotal, but it's not that someone didn't allow me to use the language because it's name didn't start with "J" and ended with "ava". I tried and failed. Other people had similar experience. There are some things to point out that many people mention as problematic, like Squeak's image.
